


Say It, Just Say It

by bicycles



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Feelings, M/M, Post Beach Divorce, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1660112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bicycles/pseuds/bicycles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief exploration of Charles Xavier's thoughts and memories five years after the "beach divorce." This is set somewhere in between Days of Future Past and First Class, and features a random cameo from Cyclops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say It, Just Say It

**Author's Note:**

> This is mainly character exploration, which I wanted to share for the sake of sharing.

The heat seemed to draw moisture from the very soil itself, heavy and fragrant in the early summer evening. It reminded him of those summer nights long ago, the summer nights spent crisscrossing blue highways across the United States, seeking something they didn't know they'd find. He had been younger, then, lost in the recklessness of emotion and discovery. He saw it, sometimes, the euphoria of those early days when mutants had been as strange to him as his own mutation. He did not know what he could do, and nor, he supposed, did they.

Charles pushed his wheelchair through the gardens of his Westchester home. The mansion loomed tall and dark behind him. The rest of the X-Men had left to visit the city, a rare night off for the Earth's protectors. But it had been a long time since any word had been heard of Magneto, and even longer since anyone had come across the Hellfire Club. The Bay of Pigs was behind them. Potential world war averted. Charles kept the events neat like that, neat and broken. He lived between the segments, where the wars became a war of words, the purest battle of mind over matter.

Without these segments, he knew that he did not know his bearings. He pressed forward, lost in the thoughts that were purely his own. These were the thoughts that plagued him since the loss, for surely, 1961 had been a loss.

He thought of crisscrossed blue highways, repetition of events to forget their ending (it never succeeded).

He thought of urban picnics, spent upon the Lincoln Memorial (where had it gone wrong?). A chess match had played itself to a stalemate. The white queen stood, resolute and yet unable to swallow the black king. No checkmate. Only hands, hands that were pointed and worn. Work lived in those hands, work and death and memories.

Charles had held those hands between his own. It had been a whimsical gesture. He had held those hands and felt their pulse beneath their own. Felt that same pulse later, in his hair and underneath it all. 

These were his memories now. These were his thoughts as he pressed forward, ignorant of the weight of his efforts. Ignorant, too, of the passage of time. It had been nearly five years since '61. In those five years, a president had died, and another had taken his place. A new war had begun. This one more ambiguous than ever. No more were the wars of good and evil, if they had ever been. This was a war of political powers and passions, passions Charles couldn't ever begin to understand. 

He thought of himself as understanding, compassionate, capable. But what he imagined himself to be and what he was seemed to create a chasm in the very middle of his body. A cleaving ax tore him open, exposed his inadequacies between his ideals and his actions. He knew this to be so, as easily as he knew that Moira had loved him, and which senators preferred which wines. 

He was, in truth, only a failed professor at the head of a band of misfits.

He plucked a rose from the nearest bush. The last rays of daylight caught the red of the petals, deepening the shade against his palm. 

"A rose is a rose is a rose..."

"To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr. Summers?" Charles turned in his wheelchair to face the intruder. "Or do you frequently recite Shakespeare to your brother's teachers?"

"Excuse me, Professor - but I've reconsidered your offer."

The younger man wore dark glasses over his eyes. They were a protective feature, designed to keep the destructive rays of his powers under control. Charles had seen these powers at work only a week ago when he'd visited Scott. But the younger man had not been open to joining a 'ragged band of idealistic misfits,' or so he had abrasively stated somewhere in between a discussion of his brother, Alex, and the fate of Vietnam.

"Jean and I - we got kicked out of our apartment. Some creep talking about moral aberrations, and anti-mutant propaganda, the usual, and well, I thought, maybe if your offer was still on the table, we could hole up here for awhile..."

"You'd have to enroll in classes and trainings, Mr. Summers. I've already stated that this is not simply a boarding house."

"I know," said Scott. He readjusted his glasses, which had just barely slipped down his nose. "Look, sorry, for the sudden intrusion, professor, but what you've done for Alex... It's been a real improvement, and if it takes donning spandex to make that work for me... Well, you can count me in. And Jean, too. She's the one who convinced me, to be honest."

"It's not just spandex. This is -"

"A commitment, yes."

His thoughts had been shattered in a single conversation. He paused to reorient himself, to push back the sudden pulse of this young man. He needed to focus upon what was before him, upon the commitment that he, too, had made. The commitment to what they had built, together. "Very well, Mr. Summers. I see no reason why you and Jean can't stay here the night. We'll discuss your commitment in the morning."

He watched the young man briefly, his shadow fading in between the shrubberies as Scott turned back to the mansion. He remained, a fragmented moment in a fragmented series of events. The effort to keep the present and past segmented required a discipline that he did not truly possess, and he knew this. 

"I'm trying too hard again," he said, aloud. He spoke to no one in particular, in hopes that what he said might be heard by those who needed to hear it. "I don't know how much longer I can bear this, this silence."

_I don't know how much longer I can know where you are and not act. Another whimsical impulse. Another day. Another era. Another try?_


End file.
